AirPlay is Apple's proprietary protocol for casting your iPhone screen to your Apple TV. The operative word here is Proprietary and if you want to use it on a non-Apple device, you're mostly likely looking at a dead end or a medium sized price tag. As far as getting AirPlay on a Windows PC is concerned, it's definitely a challenge. Meet LonelyScreen; a free app for Windows and OS X that lets you cast your iPhone's screen to your Windows PC or Mac using AirPlay. You only need to install the app on your desktop. A companion app on your iPhone is not required however, AirPlay must be supported on your device (iPhone 4S and above). Here's how it works and how well the app performs.
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Periscope for iOS has just received an update which allows you to mute users. For those of you just hearing about Periscope, it's Twitter's own take on Meerkat; a live streaming service that lets you stream your feed to your Twitter followers. Periscope follows the same principal and because it has been developed by Twitter, it used the platform to leverage its user base. If you signed up for Periscope, you automatically followed the same people you were following on Twitter. Where it makes sense to let users do just that it's only in this recent update that a mute feature has been added so you don't get notifications from uninteresting Periscope broadcasters. Here's how to mute a user on Periscope.
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Apple Music, now that it has arrived, is here to stay. Maybe some people will fight it but like all things Apple launches it will certainly inspire new services and apps to be developed. If you're loving Apple Music and have discovered new songs and artists, Playlist Hunt is a web service that you will want to check out. It's like the Product Hunt of playlists created on Apple Music. You can view playlists submitted to it daily, submit your own playlists, and even import one to listen to on your own phone. It also has a search feature that you can use to find a playlist that suits your tastes.
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You stepped away from you system and forgot to lock it. The automatic lock delay is set to a good five or maybe ten minutes and you've got something important open on your desktop so you really can't wait for it to do the job for you. If nothing else, there's a chance someone might come in and mess with your wallpaper. Meet LockItUp an absolutely wonderful iOS app worth $3.99 in the App Store that lets you remotely lock your Mac or Windows PC from your iPhone and Apple Watch. You can add multiple systems to it and lock them with a single tap. The app works from the Apple Watch as well so even if you've left your phone on your desk, you can still lock your system from your wrist. Your iPhone, Apple Watch, and your Mac and Windows PC must be connected to the same WiFi network. The developers have generously shared ten promo codes for us to giveaway to our readers. Check the end of this post for details.
Update: The giveaway is closed and the winners have been announced in the comments.
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iOS 8 unlocked the camera API opening the door for developers to create apps that could take advantage of it. ProCam 2 is one of the most famous apps to have been developed as a result but it carries a $3.99 price tag. It's not that the app doesn't deliver on its promise, and then some, it's that it is a lot more complicated than the average user might need it to be. Meet Shoot by the same developers; compared to ProCam 2 it is basic but still allows you to manually change your camera settings. Resetting them to the default settings is exceptionally simple (just double tap on the view-finder) and you can save photos in the lossless TIFF format with it. The app also features a timer, an on-screen grid, zoom, and the ability to save HDR photos separately. The app is free for a limited time and requires iOS 8 or higher.
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Chrome for iPhone has recently received an update that most iPhone users will welcome. The update adds some new swipe gestures to ease navigation within the app. The gestures take hint from those present in Safari and allow you to swipe right and left to go back or forward in a page. It's something that was previously only possible via the back and forward buttons on the URL bar. A few updates ago, Google also introduced gestures to refresh a page, close the current tab, and open a new tab. Here's how you can execute each one of those features.
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Instagram has some truly wonderful works of photography and if you can look past the many selfies that people post, you can find exceptionally great artwork. Instagram users are one of two types; active posters and passive browsers. If you don't post to Instagram often but enjoy the many accounts you've subscribed to, then Feeday is an iOS app that you might like. It's a widget for the notification center that lets you view the three most recent photos in your home stream and if you tap a photo, you can switch directly to it in the Instagram app.
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Facebook's news feed is where many of us get our daily news. Mostly we get news via the Facebook page of leading news sites like BBC, The New York Times, Reddit, etc because we've subscribed to them but not all news in our feed is created equal. With Facebook and the news we get on it, there is always the risk that it's either a hoax or someone took an article by The Onion too seriously. This is why sharing news from an authentic source is always better. Facebook has one of the best link sharing features for both pages and individual profiles and in a recent update, it's added something truly amazing. When sharing news, you can now search for and add a link to a more authentic source of information all from the Facebook app. Here's how.
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More and more people are taking to reading and sharing what they've read from their phones as opposed to doing so from their desktops. If you've ever wanted to share something you just read on your phone but also highlight an important part of it, Liner is a free iOS app that you should try out. It's a very simple text highlighting tool that will highlight the text you select on a web page. It works as a stand alone app and also integrates with Safari through an extension so that you can send a link to the app and then highlight it.
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If there's one thing we all do, it's sing along to our favorite songs when we're sure no one is listening. Sometimes you just know the lyrics to a song, and other times you don't. Whatever the case, and whatever your need is, Musixmatch is a free iOS app that's puts the lyrics to whatever song you are currently playing, in the Notification Center. Musixmatch is itself a full fledged music player that can play the music in your library and it even fills in for album art where it's missing but its widget is what makes it stand out. You can play music in the default Music app, it can come from your library, iTunes Radio, or Apple Music, and Musixmatch will show you the lyrics.
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Work places have changed a lot and it's becoming more and more common for workers to be located in different cities, and even different time zones. Where this makes it super easy for talented people to work together without geographical restraints, it's a bit of a struggle for anyone who needs to make a phone call or schedule a meeting. Klok is a free iOS app that is a wonderful tool built to help you manage communication between different time zones. In addition to being beautifully designed, the app brings ease of access by working through a widget. Users can add up to five different time zones and chart the time difference between all five.
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Stickers have become exceptionally popular and are often used instead of emojis. They're cuter, more expressive, and animated. There's a fair number of apps out there that give you a rich library of awesome stickers to use. Snackshots is a new iOS app that lets you create your very own stickers, and send them over Facebook Messenger. Snackshots provides you a library of different characters that you can use. They come in many different poses and you can add a background, and text to it, and send it to a Facebook contact. The app gives you lots of customization options; you can set the color and size of the text, choose from different fonts, and even change the color of the background you've selected.
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iOS 8.4 has been released and the big news about this update is that it brings Apple Music to all supported devices. What those not interested in Apple News may not know is that it also means a fresh and very different look for the Music app. We're taking a quick look at the UI improvements that have been made to the app and will only be touching on Apple Music as part of the UI and not how great/terrible a service it is.
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The photos we share on Facebook make up a huge part of how we interact with other people on the social network. Take the ability to post photos away from Facebook and you'd be left wondering what to there. Facebook knows just how important photos are and it makes a deliberate effort to give us a great photo sharing experience. It also buys apps like Instagram to make sure it owns all your photos. Photo sharing is of course a feature everyone uses and if you often post photos from your smartphone you might wonder how you can post them in the right order (appetizer, main course, drinks, and dessert). The Facebook app lets you arrange them easily whether you're posting them for the first time or editing a post after sharing them. Here's how.
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Adding text to photos is possibly the second most popular type of edits people make, second of course to applying filters. There are some exceptionally popular apps like Over and Photolettering that are popular because they give users wonderful fonts and complete control for playing with typography. Fork is a new app and social network that lets you add speech bubbles and comic book style elements to photos. The app aims to give photos a more comic-book like feel and comes with the stickers to boot. Here's a look at all the app has to offer.
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Imgur, while great for sharing images on Reddit is notorious for its very bad mobile apps. They recently released a fresh Android app and just a while before that overhauled their iOS app. The effort made on either one was unimpressive but Imgur still remains one of the biggest hoards of images available online. If you installed the app but are considering uninstalling it because it's so terrible you might want to keep it around because it lets you search for and send reaction GIFs from the Facebook Messenger app. Here's how.
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Instagram is a social network like no other; what started out as an app for sharing photos turned into something huge, inspiring other apps and making filters popular. Filters are one area that Instagram has been a huge inspiration but there are other utilities that the app has inspired one of which is Tagdock. It's a third-party keyboard app for iOS that's meant to be used with the Instagram app. It's worth $0.99 in the App Store and while entering hashtags isn't something overly complicated, the app makes it easier to do so by suggesting the right hashtags to use given the subject of your photo. For those of you wondering why hashtags would matter so much it's because using the right hashtag can make a difference in how many people find, view, and like your photos. You must be running iOS 8 or above to use this app.
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The larger screen on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus allow us to work more comfortably on our phones. One app that I previously couldn't have imagined using on a smaller sized iPhone but can use with considerable ease on the larger screen is MS Excel. I recently needed to make a quick spreadsheet for something (yes, this actually happens to people) but hit a bit of a snag when I realized I was on a phone and not my desktop. I needed to use the autofill function that allows me to fill a certain number of rows or columns with a series (days, months, years, etc) bu didn't know how that would work on a touchscreen. It took some time to figure out but here's how to use the autofill feature in MS Excel for iOS.
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If phantom vibrations bother you, or you feel the default vibrations on your iPhone don't do a good enough job of alerting you when you have new notification, then there's good news. iOS has a built-in feature that lets you create your very own custom vibration. It sounds complicated and nearly impossible but Apple's found a way to make it happen and the feature has been part of iOS for a good while now. Here's how you can create your very own vibration pattern for alerts on your iPhone.
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Messenger apps are not an overcrowded app category but these apps are some of the hardest to build a strong user base for. Facebook leads this space with Messenger and Whatsapp, followed by Viber. Line is another popular messaging app though with far fewer users than the top three in this category and it features some great Emojis. If you like the emojis the app has to offer but are reluctant to have yet another messaging app to check and keep up with on your phone, you can now install Line app's emoji's as a separate keyboard on your iPhone. Be warned, this app requires full access that will send everything you type (using the keyboard) to its developers. You must have iOS 8 or above running on your iPhone to use the app.
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About Addictivetips

AddictiveTips is a tech blog focused on helping users find simple solutions to their everyday problems. We review the best desktop, mobile and web apps and services out there, in addition to useful tips and guides for Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iOS and Windows Phone. Read more...